JEALOUS had short thick hands with a big gold- and-red ring on one finger. "At the end of the time we were sit- ting at the bar beside each other. Before he went to the bathroom." 'What's your name?" the lawyer said to me, and I told rum. He asked Doris her name and wrote it down along with our addresses. He asked us what relation we were to each other, and Doris said she was my aunt and my mother was her sister. He looked at me as if he wanted to ask me something, then he ran the blunt end of his pen across his cheek, where his complexion was bad, and, I guess, changed his mind. "Did the deceased say anything to ei- ther of you after he went to the bath- room?" "He didn't have time after that," Doris said. "They shot him." "I see," the lawyer said, though I re- membered what Barney had said and how odd that had been, and that he in- tended to show me something when he got back. But I didn't mention any of that. The lawyer wrote something else down and closed his notebook. He nod- ded and stuck his pen inside his coat. "If we have to call you, we'll call you," he said. He started to smile at Doris, then didn't. "O.K.?" he said. He took two business cards out of his pocket and laid them on the tabletop. "1 want you to keep my card and call me if you think of anything you want to add to your state- ments." "What was the matter with him?" Doris asked "He said he'd been in Fort Harrison, but I didn't know whether to believe that or not." The lawyer stood up, put his note- book in his back pocket. "Him and his wife got in a set-to. That's all I've heard over it. She's missing at the moment." "I'm sorry that all happened," Doris said. "Are you both going to Seattle??' he said and he didn't smile, though he said it to me. "Yes," Doris said. "His mother lives h " t ere. "It'll be warmer over there than it'll be here. You'll like that," he said. He looked around at one of the sheriff's deputies who had been waiting for him to finish with us, then he just walked away, just walked toward that man and began talking beside the bar. Once he looked over at us as if he was .. ...----..--- talking about us, but in a minute he walked outside. 1 could hear his voice, then I heard a car start up and drive away. D ORIS and I sat in the booth for ten more minutes while the deputies and a highway patrolman stood at the bar and talked. 1 thought I might go look at the place where Barney had got- ten shot, but I didn't want to get up by myself and I didn't want to ask Doris to go with me, and after we'd sat there for a while longer Doris said, "I guess we're free to go." She stood up and folded her blanket and laid it on the table, and I stood up and folded mine the same way. She went to the bar and gathered up her money and her coat and her purse and keys. Barney's work gloves were still on the bar, and I noticed that there was a pint bome of whiskey on the floor under the stool Barney had been sitting on. One of the deputies was picking up the empty shotgun shells, and he said some- thing to Doris and laughed, and Doris said, "1 just stopped in for a dnnk," and laughed herselE 1 walked quickly over to where the men with shotguns had seen down into the little hallway. And what I saw was the bathroom door knocked off of its top hinge and hanging on the bot- tom one, and bright light shining out of the bathroom. But nothing else. No holes in the wall or any marks anywhere. There wasn't even any blood I could see, though I was sure there must've been blood some- place, since I'd seen it on the sheet when Barney had been taken out. It was just empty there, almost as if nothing had happened at all. Doris walked over to me, putting things in her purse. "Let's break out of this place," she said and pulled my arm, and then the two of us walked out of the Oil City without saying anything to any- body else, and right out into the cold night where there was new snow and snow was still sifting down Outside, all the sounds were softened and I could hear better. Across the rail- road yard were the dark backs of stores on the main street of Shelby, and between them I could see hanging Christmas lights and a big yellow motel sign and the lights of cars cruising up and back. I could hear car horns blowing 137 and a switch-engine bell ringing in the dark. Two police cars sat parked at the bar with their motors running and their lights o and two women stood in the snow across the street watching the door to see what would happen next. One of the boys I'd passed in the drugstore when I'd bought my mother's watch was standing talking to the women, his hands stuck in his jacket pockets. I didn't know what they thought would happen next, maybe that there would be some more excitement. But what I thought was that someone would come and close the bar soon and that would be all. I thought it might not even open agaIn. Doris just stopped on the sidewalk then and didn't say anything. She crossed her arms and put her hands un- der them to get warm. Her chin was down, her red patent-leather shoes were covered with snow. She seemed to be considering something that hadn't oc- curred to her until she was outside. We were facing the depot, farther down the street, its windows lit. The taxi that had been in front of the Oil City was parked there now, its green roof light shining dimly. Other cars had arrived, so that I couldn't see Doris's car. My own feet were starting to be cold, and I wanted to go on to the depot and wait inside for the train. There was only an hour left until it came. "That was such a goddam unlucky thing, it just makes me sick," Doris said, and bunched her shoulders and pulled her el- bows in. "Of course, it's not what happens, it's what you do with what happens." She looked around at the two other bars on the block, which looked exactly like the Oil City-dark, wood fronts with red bar signs in the win- dows. "I've got snakes in my boots right now," she said, "which is what the Irishman says." And she spit. She spit right in the street in the snow 1 had never seen a woman do that. "Did you ever hear your dad say he had snakes in his boots when he was drinking?" " N " 1 . d 0, saJ.. "It means you need another drink. But I don't think I can approach one more bar tonight. I need to go sit in my car and regain my composition." In the Oil City the jukebox started up, 1l:t